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California state officials recently sworn into office include: Attorney General, Kamala Harris, Governor Jerry Brown, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Victoria Kolakowski, and Betty Yee, a member of the California Board of Equalization.
Harris: "And in the spirit of Earl Warren, we are going to fight for the civil rights of every Californian – to worship as you will ... to live and work where you choose ... and to marry the person you love."

Evan Wolfson ’78, founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry, and Maggie Gallagher ’82, former president of the National Organization for Marriage, joined about 250 students and guests in Sudler Hall for a YPU debate titled “Resolved: Same-Sex Couples Should be Allowed to Marry.”

With LGBT Pride month now underway, Media Matters contacted various LGBT advocacy organizations and leaders - including Freedom to Marry's own Communications Director, Sean Eldridge - for their thoughts on media coverage of the LGBT community thus far in 2010.

There is a large battle looming in Washington over legislation to reform our nation’s immigration laws. This coming Sunday, March 21, many LGBT immigrants, their families, and allies will march in support of immigration reform. Now is the time for us, as LGBT individuals, families, and communities, to understand why immigration reform is so critical.

Towleroad reports that "Male-Female married couples in Australia in which a transgender individual makes a physical gender transition so that the couple becomes a same-sex couple will no longer have their marriages annulled by the Australian government later this year." [Link]

When my partner first came out as trans to my family and hers, a few years after we were married in Brooklyn’s City Hall, they made sure I was happy and that the person they’d known as their son-in-law was too. They weren’t sure they could manage the change of pronouns very easily, or quickly; they wanted to know what her name would be, and what kinds of documents we would need to change. My brother who is our accountant wanted to know what this might mean for our tax status, and almost everyone asked if her transition from male to female would mean that we were no longer married.

Luckily for us, contract law in the US says we still are, and will be; as long as a contract is legal at the time it’s entered into, it remains legal. We are, as a result, a legally married same-sex couple, or a legally married queer couple, or a marriage made up of two people who, if we met now instead of 11 years ago, would probably not be legally allowed to be married.

Remarkably enough, there are plenty of couples like us in the US; it is an awful lot for the partner of a trans person to make it through transition with the trans person they love, and it would add insult to injury if we could not keep the public, legal recognition of our commitment to each other after having been through so much change together.

Remarkably enough, the sky hasn’t fallen in because we are a legally married family of two. We love our nieces and nephews, all thirteen of them, as much as ever. We love our parents and our siblings and our friends as much as ever, and they love us, and not one has ever considered that we shouldn’t be married, which is as it should be. What we are is tired of feeling so guilty, and so lucky. If everyone were granted the Freedom to Marry, we wouldn’t have to be.

The AustralianAugust 28, 2008Labor's new senator Louise Pratt, who makes history as the first member of parliament with a transgendered partner, has used her maiden speech to break from ALP policy and call for marriage equality. [Link]